This blog provides short, easy-to-digest summaries of recently published research relating to bullying, peer-aggression and peer-victimization. It is maintained by staff and students from the School of Psychological Sciences and Health at the University of Strathclyde.

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December 22, 2011

Being in control isn't always a good thing...

These authors were interested
in seeing what factors explained how children respond to peer-victimization.
They note that a history of frequent peer-victimization may make children
respond more emotionally in similar context e.g. experiencing higher levels of
anger, fear and embarrassment. They also suggest that children’s attitudes can
help us understand the ways in which they respond, citing evidence that
children with positive attitudes toward aggression are more likely to respond
aggressively. Finally, drawing on some of my own published work and on transactional coping theory, they suggest that children’s perceptions of control can
influence their reactions and the ways in which they respond to
peer-victimization.

Here, the goal was to
investigate these issues using a longitudinal design. Overall, responses from
311 students were included. The young people involved were aged between 10 and
13 years old and were based in four separate schools in the US. All young people
taking part did so on two occasions, and these were 6 months apart. They
assessed a few different kinds of coping: peer social support, adult/family
social support, internalizing (e.g. feeling sad, bottling feelings up),
externalizing (e.g. swearing, hitting things, acting out, fighting back), and
avoidance (e.g. staying away from specific areas in school). Participants also
reported on their level of peer-victimization, their attitudes toward being
aggressive, and their sense of control over bullying behaviors directed toward
them. All measures were self-report.

Results indicated that boys
were more likely to use externalizing, were more likely to be victimized, and
were more likely to hold positive attitudes toward the use of aggression. Girls
were more likely than boys were to seek and receive peer support.

When predicting coping
strategy use at the end of the study, there were only two important predictors:
Attitudes supporting the use of aggression
predicted an increase in the use of internalizing coping behaviour as well as a
reduced likelihood of asking for help from adults and family members. Higher
levels of control were related to more use of externalizing responses over
time.

Additionally,
for young people who felt that there wasn’t much they could do to stop bullying
behaviour (i.e. they had low perceived control) pro-aggression attitudes reduced
the chances that they would ask for help. Furthermore, pro-aggression attitudes
coupled with a high sense of control made students less likely to avoid
situations where they might be bullied. Finally, young people with low levels
of peer support were more likely to use externalizing coping, and this was
exacerbated when they also had high levels of perceived control.

The
authors note some important policy implications of their work. They suggest
that improving young people’s perceptions
of control can impact both positively and negatively how they respond to peer-victimization.
Because of this, it is important to both increase a sense of control emphasise which
behaviours are the best ways to respond. They feel that work (i) reducing
attitudes supporting the use of aggression and (ii) building peer support
networks can help achieve these goals.